Dreams....

Each morning in the Mayan village the family members gather around the cooking hearth to begin the day with the usual warming of food and retelling of each persons dream in the night just past. By skillfully reading the family dreams every morning, a grandma or grandfather could help all the members of the compound navigate through the many dangers of this hard earth-oriented struggle for life. They may even be able to direct their families to some unseen opportunities.

It is believed there are two simultaneous faces of reality: the world where we work and the world where we dream. Shamans call these two realities the Twins. A dream is considered the remembered fragment of the experience of one's natural spirit in the twin world, the dreamworld. The twin world of dreams like this world, never ceases living, forming as it does a parallel continuum to the waking world. It actually forms one half of the substance of our lives. Although the landscape of dreams may seem different than the landscape of the awake world, it is actually the balanced opposite, reversed version, where our souls live out our bodies' lives. Dreams read life back to us like a storyteller

Like the two opposing wings of a butterfly, the dreamworld is one wing and the awake world is the other wing. The butterfly must have both wings connected at the Heart in order to fly and function.

Excerpts taken from "Secrets of the Talking Jaguar" memoirs from the living heart of a mayan village.

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Eighth Grade Graduation Ode to Naomi Jean

When you were born I held you, I watched you learn to walk, and eat, yes eat! It has always been your very favorite! I put you in school at five just as most parents do, then I took you back out at six wanting you beside me for all those hours to guide your character and give you lots of space. When I decided to redirect my life it threw me a curve ball too and changed your life in unexpected ways, yet things have turned out good. It has led us to a lot of new things like this school with all these teachers that care so genuinely about you.

Naomi is a quiet, radical girl, with unexpected bursts of laughter and a steady foot. She is trustworthy, confident, outspoken and all together beguiling. As firstborn child you are characteristically independent and very individual. Your eye catching beauty and charm present from birth; you tend to these assets well and make them uniquely you. You have surprised and delighted me with your scholastic finesse, your maturity and strength. My hope is that life treats you well, with not too much pain; that your steps are wise and lead you with grace to the place of your hearts satisfaction.

Mattew 10:16 …be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. This is my prayer for you.

What do I believe?

A few years back I left my former life to try make sense of what I thought "happiness" was supposed to be. I woke up very early one Saturday morning to a voice that was as audible as someone speaking out loud, my inner voice speaking loudly to myself. I heard it say "I'm going to leave this guy" and knew it was the truth. My heart started to pound. These were not easy words to hear. As a woman, as a mother and a christian these words shook my world. 24 hours later I began to leave. This was no act of faith on my part. This was an act of will. There was no consolation for getting divorced in the Bible so I lost faith for a while because I couldn't move forward in it. I was frightened, at times terrified at what might befall me having made this choice. I literally I broke my own heart in the life I had invested so I wouldn't lose my mind. During that time I even went so far as to pose an option to myself like you could leave your husband or you could leave Christianity and stay married and maybe that would work but inside I knew it wasn't the answer to peace either. Consequently, I ended up leaving both.

How could I leave someone for my own happiness. For a lot of people this is easy. They just turn and walk away and demolish their past like it's nothing. But it haunts me, it revisits me over and over like waves on a shore. Like a silent movie with words and no sound straining to be at rest with what I have chosen. What is the matter with me? Why can't I let this thing go?! It feels like the most selfish thing I've ever done.

Such a fine wife I made. Why did I leave? I left because I felt alone. I was living inside of my self functioning inside the relationship. This still small place cramping in the middle of this fantastic family and I was on the margins, and the epitome of goodness. It was my display and the devotion of my heart but it was not me. I had had difficulty with Christianity from the beginning. I remember early on in the 1st and 2nd year encountering lose of identity in the most devastating way being swept into a cult. Another time giving in to depression caused by the divide in what I was trying to be and who I was on a very organic level, in the matrix of being that you are. So I counseled twice for those 2 things, counseled again when I found myself falling in love with my former husband and began to gain some insight into the issue.

At another moment time I was going to leave my family because I felt I was going to have a total breakdown. All the hours alone with small babies were so long and late into the night but God in his mercy changed their fathers work schedule that very same day. gained some relief. I never thought about divorce. It was not within my principles of faith, never in my conversations for many reasons. We were raising children having a great family life and it was not biblical. As for partnership we were somewhat at odds with each other over my artistic career, homeschooling and all my alternative challenges and his leaving the creative field for financial reasons and unobtained opportunities.

Finally, I chose to stop thinking about all I believed and made an "illegal u turn" in the middle of my life, pushed a grocery cart out into traffic as a distraction and ran off. Keeping what I knew of God as being an emphatically loving entity I pushed all of my beliefs aside in order to move forward and haven't turned back. It is my belief that He will bring this thing full circle and bring me back in to relationship with new understanding. Not saying it has been easy or I never have doubts and wonder if this whole thing is going to fly back in my face like a grenade!? So far it has supported me this wonderful, purposeful, painful reconciliation of me to my own life. In the end I realized I never left God but left the rules and regulations of a Christian life in order to live one. After all, it is my life to live.

I Can Taste Eternity

It is this overwhelming sense of love that I feel for you... This immersing rush of energy when laying with you, touching you, kissing you. Words have no meaning, only loves essence as it pours from my soul to cover you. I love you.

It is this fragility of life that touches me every now and then and takes me by surprise, when someone I love is having a momentary lose of life and is pressing close to the thin veil of time and all you have are prayers. Lucid and powerful the emotional connections - the way we share as we stand seperate in our skin. I love you.

She died in peace. I didn't know her but feel her pass. The family the vessel of her memory, motherless children, with sorrow, and joy give birth to tomorrow. Always will there be the pain. The moment is right when we are thinking about you. We in our lose; your feelings, powerful as we stand next to you seperate in our skin. Your hands now touching eternity. I love you.

Soul Music

Just when you think it can't get any worse it can... Just like when you don't expect something to come and it does or you think life can't get any weirder and it does in the middle of an ordinary day. Like wanting pie and all they have left is soup or cake. Or spending a quiet afternoon with a friend and running into the best Japanese noodle shop on the planet. I smile when I think of a recent Sunday evening when I finally made time for myself to listen to some music that a friend who lives in California alerted me to that was showing in St. Paul. How out of the ordinary is that? So we went, my boyfriend and I, to listen to a very uncommon duo of a woman and a daughter/son as he calls himself, we listened to their music journey. She plays the bass and makes fun of us and makes light of things. He tells of his past and plays guitar singing in the most haunting voice regarding hard choices and recently becoming a man. She makes a beautiful man I say to my boyfriend. They harmonize on a creative alchemical level, journeying by soul there. Their songs containing messages of the heart about grief, the question of acceptance, suffering, change, making peace and love. Their music is this metaphysical union of their geniuses that carries like the sound of angels. What they are playing is not just music, it is the embodiment of who they are.

Oaxaca

After 10 days of traveling, 240 hours of breathing and not thinking about anything but the sensations that surrounded me I reached my soul. My body lean from not eating much and awakened from the sun, walking and swimming I perceived the energy of the location rise above the ground around me like water swelling. It was as if I could see it, this psychic energy roaring about my legs in great waves. I could enter in and out of other peoples bodies and be them, feel their spirit and feel what they were experiencing. It was amazing and somewhat shocking. Then that day came to an end and I left those people. And the next day had to go back to the states, back to the city, back to the responsibilities of my domestic life and happily back to my lover. I do not want to let go of this awareness inside of me. It's something you can't ask to happen but become aware of in certain places with certain people or sometimes alone if the senses are willing. With this trip I commit myself to the wilder parts of me and my creative work.

Today I Wear My Smile

Waking tired I’m dead a sleep, I do not want to move.
Move I do, I wash my face with vanquished energy.
My clothes look worn and old they’re used
but purchase I cannot.
I think and I can change this style,
I can wear my smile.

With make up on and hair brushed back
I take my coat and coffee.
To drive as every other morn, down this forsaken highway!
But speak with loving thoughts and cheer
to heart and mind and soul
The hurdles melt along the way
I choose to smile not mutter.